


screaming in the silence

by thisgirlsays22



Category: due South
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Angst, Drama, M/M, Romance, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:33:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28077762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisgirlsays22/pseuds/thisgirlsays22
Summary: Fraser's got every right to be upset, but it’s the silence that’s killing Ray.
Relationships: Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalski
Comments: 9
Kudos: 45
Collections: due South Seekrit Santa 2020





	screaming in the silence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SpaceTimeConundrum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceTimeConundrum/gifts).



> Happy holidays, Conundrum! 
> 
> And a huge thank you to my beta for all her hard work!

Three red gashes cross Fraser’s chest in a perfect arc from his right shoulder to the left side of his abdomen. Black stitches march in a neat row down the partially healed wounds. The bite mark, thankfully sterile, is covered by ace bandages wrapped around Fraser’s bicep. Good. Ray doesn’t want to look at it.

“You got some sort of seal blubber ointment I should be using for these instead?” Ray asks, voice like those three gashes to the silence. His hand hovers, suspending the damp washcloth midair.

“Soap and water is fine.” Fraser’s voice is clipped, and somehow it sounds like it’s coming from somewhere far away even though he’s sitting right in front of Ray, perched on the edge of the tub.

“First time for everything.” Ray dabs the red, puckered skin around the wound.

Fraser swallows audibly. “I really could do this myself.” 

“Shut up, Fraser.” Ray keeps his eyes on the cloth, on Fraser’s skin. This body that he was starting to memorize piece by piece is now foreign to him.

“I’ll be fine, Ray, really.” Fraser hesitates for a moment, then says, “The consulate would be perfectly adequate for my recovery.”

Ray snaps his gaze to Fraser’s, jaw working. “I know you’re mister self-sufficient, but even you have to realize that’s a load of bull. There ain’t no way you can recover on your own in the consulate. You’re staying here, and in two days we’re going to boogie down together under the full moon.”

“Boogie down?”

Ray rolls his eyes. “Shift, Fraser. I’m going to teach you to howl at the moon and chase deer and make sure you don’t get yourself—” or anyone else “—hurt.”

When they signed Fraser over to Ray—and let’s face it, that’s what that hospital discharge really was—that was the unspoken intent. Ray’s good with that. Even if the circumstances were different, he’d still want to be the one to show Fraser the ropes. He’s been a shifter his whole life, so he’s got a thing or two he can pass along. A position he never thought he’d be in after Stella dumped him and sank his dreams of kids. 

“Oh, right then.” Fraser goes quiet and sullen again. He’s got every right to be upset, but it’s the silence that’s killing Ray.

Bristling, Ray scowls as he dunks the rag back in the bowl of soapy water. Sure this—this _thing_ between him and Fraser only really got going a month ago, but there’s a year of history between them now beyond that. And taking your best friend to bed has got to mean something more than the cold silence that’s settled over them for the past three days.

Granted, Fraser was mostly asleep for those first two after Ray had brought him home from the hospital. Even granteder, Ray deserves Fraser’s anger. It would just be a hell of a lot better for both of them if Fraser would cut the silent treatment and tear Ray a new one. If anything between them is salvageable, bottling it up is a surefire way to burn those final bridges down to ash.

“You may want to mix some salt into the water,” Fraser says quietly. “It mimics the body’s pH levels and functions as a saline solution.”

“Alright,” Ray agrees. “Salt it is. One order of salt coming right up.” He pats Fraser quickly, his hand touching Fraser’s wrist. Fraser’s pulse is alive and warm under Ray’s fingers. He leaves them on Fraser’s wrist for longer than he should.

It’s then that Ray feels it. The surge of—resistance, pain, maybe even fear. And it’s not coming from inside Ray. _The call is not coming from inside the house_. It’s coming from _Fraser_. Ray had forgotten that might happen. If you already had an emotional connection before the turn, there was a good chance that would kick up a few hundred notches after. It was something Ray had never experienced firsthand but known about the way you might read about the deepest parts of the ocean or the center of the earth.

It’s a wonderful sensation, Ray’s awed by it, but it’s terrible the way it’s laced with that resistance. He freezes in place.

Fraser clears his throat and Ray jerks his hand back. “Sorry.”

Ray stands quickly and goes to the kitchen. Before he retrieves the salt, he rests his forearms on the breakfast bar and hangs his head. Fraser won’t talk to him about what happened, and he refuses to talk about anything else that might even be in the same neighborhood as meaningful. Dief, having trailed Ray from the hallway to the kitchen, lets out a low, unhappy whine.

“Yeah, me too, buddy,” he mutters.

It feels good to be taking care of Fraser as far as Fraser will let him. The desperation inside Ray to touch him, to be close to him again is overpowering. Even just being close to Fraser to redress his wounds feels like a gift, and it soothes some of that ache.

As Ray finishes wrapping the last bandage, he catches Fraser fighting back a yawn.

“You should get some rest. Take the bed again tonight,” Ray says, more an order than an offer.

“I’ll take the couch, Ray. Really, I’m perfectly fine to sleep there tonight.”

Ray gapes at him. Fraser could be bleeding out, half-dead, and he still wouldn’t want to put Ray out. “Get in the bed, Fraser.”

“I’m healing quickly, just as you said.”

“Yeah, I don’t doubt that, but it’s a process. Your body’s still getting used to—” Ray stumbles over the words “—the changes. So. Get. In. The. Bed.”

It takes some wrangling and manhandling and more passive-borderline-aggressive protests but Ray eventually gets Fraser all nice and tucked in and then marches out to the couch himself. If Fraser had planned to be out here alone, Ray’s not going to argue with him on that point. It’s for the best anyway; he doesn’t want to risk hurting Fraser in his sleep.

And with the way Ray’s body is pinging off Fraser’s _I made you, I made you, I want you, I want you, I need to claim you_ Ray should probably be about a hundred miles away instead of one measly room apart. Maybe it’ll help dull that aching desire in the short term. Long term, Ray’s not so sure what the fuck he’s going to do because even if Fraser’s body still wants him, he has his doubts about whether Fraser’s mind would follow suit. Ray couldn’t blame him if he didn’t want anything to do with him after this. 

Even if it was to save his life, turning your partner, your best friend-turned-lover, into a werewolf without his permission was pretty much one of the worst things you could do.

Tired as he is, Ray can’t sleep. He tosses and turns on the couch, which isn’t doing his back any favors. His mind keeps circling back to seeing Fraser bleeding out on the floor, to the blind panic he’d felt, to the way his teeth felt sinking into Fraser’s arm. He can feel the give of the skin and the way he could feel something twisting inside of him, leaving him as it moved to Fraser.

Then he’s replaying his time in the hospital. Pacing the waiting room alone and panicked, wondering if the bite would take or if Fraser’s body would reject it. If Fraser wouldn’t make it.

Welsh and Thatcher had arrived at the same time, dragging Ray out of the black misery of his fears.

“Mind filling me in on just what the hell happened?” Welsh pressed his thumb and index finger to his forehead. “Why two of my finest were in that warehouse without backup? And why is one of them now in the hospital for a wolf bite?”

“I did it,” Ray said quietly, staring down at the ugly linoleum floor. He was hunched forward, hands clasped between his knees. “I’m the one that bit him.” He doesn’t bother explaining the bullshit reason why Fraser had chased those mob goons into a warehouse without backup. Hell, he doesn’t even know the reason himself. Just that Fraser gave chase and Ray followed after him.

“You did what?” It was Thatcher who spoke now, her voice was pure, tightly controlled rage, and Ray’s hackles went up. 

“He was dying, okay? The guys he’d chased—they were shifters. One sank his claws into Fraser real good, and he was bleeding out. I didn’t have a choice.” 

“That was an unconscionably rash, foolhardy decision for you to make, even by your standards, Detective.” Thatcher’s cheeks were red.

“You think I would have done this just for no good reason? Fraser scrapes his knee and I panic and turn him?”

Welsh stepped forward, getting in between the two of them. “I think we can safely say Detective Kowalski was operating in a high-pressure situation and had to make a difficult judgment call.”

Thatcher scowled, but when she spoke again her voice was quieter. “This could ruin him.” 

“I know,” Ray said helplessly.

“He may never work in law enforcement again.”

“I know.”

“I’ll do everything in my power, but the process can be needlessly bureaucratic and long-winded. I’ve seen seemingly straightforward applications get denied.”

Jesus. That coming from Thatcher. Ray scrubbed his hands over his face, exhausted again.

In Ray’s memory, Welsh and Thatcher look at him with horror and disappointment. Each time he replays the scene, their expressions shift between both emotions. He doesn’t remember the truth, not exactly, but it fills him with sadness and shame no matter how he slices it.

When Ray wakes up the next morning after having fallen into a fitful sleep, Fraser and Dief are gone. Panic wells up inside of him. He checks the apartment twice even though they’re obviously not there.

Ray tells himself that Fraser’s a grown man, he’ll be fine. His injuries are healing fast, and even if his senses are wonky and off. Fraser’s senses are probably always wonky and off, so maybe this is just a cakewalk for him.

He convinces himself it’s all fine until nearly an hour passes. Then he grabs his jacket and heads out the door. A cold rain sleets down, making Ray’s hair cling to his forehead. The rain makes everything take a hundred times longer to get anywhere, mostly because the other drivers are taking their time. Ray squints through the windshield, the wipers swishing softly against the glass.

Instinct guides him as he heads to Lincoln Park. He can’t smell Fraser, not exactly, but there’s this odd pull, this sense of knowing, that leads him to North Pond where he finds Fraser sitting on a bench staring out at the water as if he doesn’t even notice the rain. Dief is nowhere in sight.

“Hey,” Ray says, shoving his wet hands in his pockets.

“Ray,” Fraser greets. 

Being a maker is not something Ray ever thought he’d be. Having kids is different from turning someone else. Even if someone had asked him for it, he’s not sure he’d have had it in him.

When he sits down next to Fraser, their arms and shoulders touching, Ray can feel this low-grade ache humming beneath the surface of his skin, and it takes him a minute to realize that it might be his own new wonky senses again. He’s been weirdly attuned to Fraser for a long time now, but this is taking it to another level of weird. These sensations magnify what he was already feeling towards Fraser, overwhelming Ray.

“Everything’s too bright, Ray.”

Ray jolts, feeling like Fraser’s just read his thoughts.

“Yeah, I remember that.” Puberty had been a bitch. It was bad enough for regular teenagers, but when you were a shifter it was all a mess of bright colors and noise and sound and unbearable horniness and sore limbs and joints dialed up to one hundred. At least Fraser was well beyond puberty. “It’ll get better.”

“Will it?” 

“It’s gonna get worse before it gets better,” Ray admits.

Fraser’s mouth is tight. “I thought that might be the case.”

“When you turn, it ain’t going to be pretty the first time.”

Ray doesn’t want to freak Fraser out, but he wants to set expectations. Whether you’re born with it or come into it the way Fraser did, the first time sucks. It never stops hurting, but the pain eventually becomes routine, your body adjusts and the fear dissipates. Then it’s just something that happens to you once a month. Stella used to joke about female shifters really getting the short end of the stick. 

“That’s not what’s bothering me. They might not let me keep my job,” Fraser says.

“They will.”

“You don’t know that, Ray.”

The rain is slowing down. They both sit, damp and quiet, listening to the rain splatter against the pond and ground. Ray digs his hands into the soaked wood of the bench, hunching over. “What’ll you do?”

He chances a look at Fraser who swipes his thumb over his eyebrow. “You’ll recall my father has a plot of land. Ray Vech— _you_ helped me rebuild the cabin there. There were a few locals who were shifters. I imagine it’s a place that very much, ah, suits those needs. I always imagined someday I’d return, I just didn’t think it might be under these circumstances.” 

“Fraser I—I’m so—” He’s trying to find the words to convince Fraser he’s jumping to conclusions, the words to beg him to stay or promise him that wherever he goes, Ray is ready to follow if Fraser will have him.

“Please, don’t.”

So Ray doesn’t.

Ray throws some frozen steaks down on the counter to thaw and fishes around in the crisper drawer for potatoes he has vague memories of buying. When he finds them, they’re sporting a few growths, but he gives them a sniff, shrugs, and cuts them off before starting in on peeling the skin. 

“Can I help you with anything?” Fraser asks from behind him.

“Nah, nah. You need to build up your strength. S’why I’m making so much protein here. You’ll be thankful.”

“I see.”

Fraser will barely even look him in the eyes, and Ray gets that a life-changing thing this huge is a lot to take in. But maybe this doesn’t bode so well with how Fraser sees their life together panning out. Or not panning out if he’s really thinking of leaving anyway. Maybe it doesn’t bode well for the kind of life Ray wants. Fraser’s temporarily living with him, but he might as well have fucked off back to Canada already with how far away he seems.

This was the guy who had looked up at him with awe, panting his name as he came in Ray’s arms. This was the guy who Ray had caught staring at him with heartbreaking tenderness when he opened his eyes in the morning. Ray had never thought this person existed and to have just met him only to have him disappear is a real kick in the head. It feels like the weeks before Stella told him to move out. There wasn’t any fighting, just a stiffness, a lack of movement between them.

Ray can’t bring himself to ask the real questions like _do you hate me, are we finished, can I hold you one more time_ , so he fills the silence with inane chatter that falls flat on the floor. For so long he’d wanted to be part of a pack; he’d thought children with Stella, loads of them, would be the answer. He’d take Fraser, though. God, he’d be happy to take Fraser as part of his pack. Guilty as he is, part of him wants this more than he ever would have admitted before this week.

When Ray’s tried to verbalize some of these thoughts, Fraser’s cut him off before Ray can get beyond all the throat-clearing. Instead of talking, Fraser started yammering about how shifter rights have changed over the years, how he’d been shocked back in the middle of nowhere to discover that Mrs. So and So McMooserton had been a shifter or Mr. VonCaribou was married to one and by 1975 they’d been allowed to open a shop together with his wife as his business partner.

The closest Fraser’s been to dropping the polite Mountie mask was when Ray walked in on Fraser quietly arguing with himself: “Well, thank you for pointing out that painfully obvious fact—” but Ray had never found out what that obvious fact was or what the hell was going on in Fraser’s mind because he’d clammed up as soon as Ray walked into the room.

The steaks are ready—raw and juicy, and Ray slaps two onto Fraser’s plate and two onto one for himself. 

“Eat up, Fraser,” Ray says, trying to force some cheer into his voice. It’s like trying to squeeze yourself into an old suit that just doesn’t quite fit anymore. He feels false, the smile plastered on his face plastic. “Protein helps with the shifting. Don’t ask me why. That phys—phisio—”

“Physiology?”

“That’s the one. Goes right over my head. But I know the more meat I eat, the better it goes.”

Fraser launches into a long-winded monologue about the physiology of shifters and why they might need more protein before the full moon, the impact of transformation on a body. Ray’s eyes glaze over.

“Just eat, will ya, Fraser?” Ray shoves the plate full of steak and potatoes closer to Fraser. Maybe it’s not silence so much as the lack of not saying anything worth saying that’s grinding Ray’s gears down to raw scraps of metal.

Fraser may as well be sitting across from him explaining how lungs work, how people breathe, for all the good this line of conversation is doing either of them. Ray wants something real. He aches to touch Fraser. He would even if it wasn’t for the bond between them now calling desperately to Ray. If it meant they could move beyond all this nothing, Ray would take another punch to the face to get them out of this holding pattern.

Tomorrow is the full moon. They’re down to the wire here, and Ray isn’t sure what to expect from any of it.

It rains all day, but by night it’s stopped, leaving a cool, breezy night in its wake. Clouds remain, and the full moon flickers in and out of sight. It doesn’t diminish its power, though. The call of it still booms and pulses through Ray’s veins. His body is itching to become something else.

Earlier in the day, they’d dropped Dief at the consulate with Turnbull—it was too risky to bring Dief for Fraser’s first time shifting. They’d driven miles out of the city to the Humiston Woods Nature Preserve where fifty years back they’d passed a law to allow shifters to buy pieces of land there for the full moon.

They’d set up camp together an hour before nightfall. There’s no real reason for it. Just feels right to set up some sort of base while they wait for the moon to rise. Tomorrow they’ll have somewhere they can sleep and recuperate before heading back to the city.

Ray keeps trying to think of what to say to prepare Fraser but realizes that nothing really can. He and Stella bought this land together back when they’d both figured they’d mated for life and wanted some territory they could claim together as they grew their pack, their family. She gave it to him in the divorce. He doesn’t know where she goes now. Probably somewhere fancy where before and after the full moon you can get pampered, the full shifter spa shebang. It’s easier for people like them who were born into it than it’ll ever be for someone like Fraser.

People know you’ve got control of yourself, you know you’ve got control of yourself. Fraser doesn’t have that luxury now, not yet, maybe not ever.

“How you feeling?” Ray keeps his voice casual.

“Fine, thank you. My injuries are almost fully healed.”

“Yeah, it must seem pretty weird at first, how fast you heal. I take it for granted now.”

“I suppose it’s an unforeseen benefit.”

“You could call it that.”

Fraser tugs at the collar of his shirt. “If given the chance again to resume my work for the RCMP I won’t let it make me careless.”

There’s something under Fraser’s words that Ray can’t quite figure out. “That’s good?”

“Your partner or your own abilities to heal quickly doesn’t mean one shouldn’t try to avoid the injuries in the first place.”

Oh. “Yeah. One should try to avoid the injuries in the first place,” Ray agrees. This vague admission of wrongdoing is so beyond the point that Ray doesn’t have anything else to add. Fraser needs to shout at him over the bite, not talk in circles around how he put them in a dangerous, deadly position.

The cold sides of the metal fold-out chair dig into the crooks of his fingers as he clenches his fists. Ray’s too much of a coward to try apologizing again. Too afraid that it would spell out the end for them, and he wants to put it off for as long as possible. Same way he did with Stella.

“Eat another protein bar. Just in case,” Ray says instead of _I shouldn’t have turned you_. _I’m so sorry you have to do this tonight. Every month. Forever._

Fraser does as he’s told, though he doesn’t look pleased.

“Sorry it’s not that dried caribou stuff you like so much.”

“Pemmican,” Fraser says, and Ray swears there’s a ghost of a smile on his lips though the rest of his body stays rigid and Ray can feel the pain still radiating off of Fraser in waves.

There’s always this moment where everything snaps into place on the night of the full moon. A shift in the air, the energy of the atmosphere, as the moon fills the sky. Ray stands and gazes up at it.

“You can control your shifting,” Fraser says abruptly, a glum accusation.

“Yeah. Been doing this since puberty. You might be able to control it eventually. I’d recommend taking off your clothes,” Ray offers. 

Fraser clears his throat. “Would you mind terribly…giving me some privacy?”

“Uhh. I mean, it’s nothing I haven’t already seen before.”

“No. The shifting.”

“Oh.” The request stings for reasons Ray doesn’t have time to process. “Are you sure because I—maybe I can—”

“I’m sure.”

“Okay.” Ray shrugs one shoulder, going for casual, like it isn’t making him scared and sad and weird that Fraser doesn’t want him to bear witness to that moment. “I’ll find you after. I’ll be nearby if you need anything.” He doesn’t mention the bond, neither of them has brought it up yet. Ray would want it to be reassuring, and he’s not sure it would come out that way now.

Ray goes and stands on his own at the outer edge of the clearing. Everything is louder now. The sounds of small animals running around the underbrush, birds swooping through the trees, the occasional hoot of an owl. His blood pulses loud and hot under his skin as he waits to see if he can feel that moment Fraser turns for the first time. Ray is holding himself back from shifting until Fraser is done.

It’s a vicious thing when Fraser howls up at the moon. The sound prickles Ray’s sensitive ears and makes the hair at the back of his neck stand on edge. He shivers. Teetering on the edge of the change, every sense is heightened, prickling, and overwhelming.

The raw, ferocious call beckons to Ray, and his body responds in kind. His cock hardening as he sheds his clothes and the crisp night air brushes against his skin. The smell of pine and woods and earthy wet ground fill his nostrils as he begins to run. And underneath it all, Fraser’s scent, drawing him like a string.

That moment where he picks up speed, where his body snaps into place and he shifts, there’s nothing else like it in this world.

When he reaches the center of the clearing, he slows his gait, approaching Fraser slowly. Wild, pale blue eyes stare at him, startling against the thick black fur they’re set back against. 

Fraser lowers his head and growls, and Ray doesn’t shrink back in fear. A warning lunge forward, the snap of his teeth. Fraser mimics the action, another low growl filling the space between them, and then Ray braces himself in time for the impact as Fraser crouches forward and then leaps.

They wrestle and spar, and Ray just keeps thinking _yeah, let it out, buddy_. Because this is what he’s wanted all this time. It goes beyond the last few days and stretches all the way back almost to the start. He’s always wanted Fraser down here wrestling in the mud with him. Words might be better some of the time, but there were plenty of times you needed to put on your gloves and hash it out in the ring.

Ray is grateful for every bite and scratch and growl. He knows he can handle this, can keep Fraser from doing any real damage. Under the lingering fear, there’s hope that maybe tomorrow there could be something real between them again. 

When they wake up the next morning in the grass, their naked bodies caked with mud and leaves and grime, Ray has never felt more raw and alive. His body is an electric wire, thrumming with need and want.

The sky is burning blue, and Ray finds himself smiling up at it.

He rolls onto his side and finds Fraser watching him, eyes mirroring that same want and need that’s consuming Ray. He can feel the intensity of Fraser’s desire as if it’s part of himself too.

Ray should open his mouth and say something. They should talk. Have a real conversation now. About the rage and the pain and the ways Ray’s fucked Fraser’s life up. 

They move in tandem, bodies clutching at one another as they roll around, grass scratching up against the backs of Ray’s thighs. His cock brushes against Fraser’s, and he holds him down in place and grinds against him.

When Ray slides down Fraser’s body, he drags his tongue slowly up Fraser’s cock until he gets to the top where he takes his time lapping the salty pre-cum off the thick head. Underneath him, Fraser shivers, his voice raw and ragged as he pants, “Ray, please. Please just—don’t tease me, Ray.”

So Ray doesn’t.

After, lying in the grass, the breeze cooling their hot skin, Ray says, “I’m sorry. Fraser, I wish I hadn’t—but I did. I didn’t have a choice.”

“You did, Ray.” Fraser’s tone isn’t accusatory.

“For me losing you when I have a way not to is never going to be an option. At least if you’re alive, even if you hate me now, there’s a chance that one day you won’t anymore.”

“I don’t hate you, Ray. I never could.” Fraser swallows and cracks his neck. “But you’ve been so angry. I could feel it.”

“What?” Ray lets that sink in for a minute. “No, Fraser. No. I was never—that’s not what I was feeling. I was angry because you wouldn’t fucking talk to me.”

“But I’m the one who behaved recklessly. If it weren’t for my actions, you would have never been put in that position. Into danger yourself, no less.”

Ray looks at Fraser for a long while. Sure, he’s got a point. One Ray should probably have a go at him for, ream him out for all yet another wildly dangerous situation Fraser got them into. But that lesson’s already sunk in, no one punishing Fraser more than he’s already punishing himself.

“Yeah,” Ray says finally. “You had your part, I had mine. But what’s done is done and I gotta say it might be nice not to be a lone wolf anymore. So, uh, whaddya say, Fraser. You want to howl up at the moon with me every month?”

“Yes, Ray, I think I’d like that very much.”

“Because you don’t have to, you know. Just because I made you. You still got a choice in this.”

Fraser smiles at him indulgently. “I know.”

Ray scratches the back of his neck, his other hand digging into the ground. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, Fraser. With your job and everything. But I want you to know that where you go, I go. There are full moons all around the world. I hear they even have them in the ass-end of nowhere.”

Fraser’s brows knit together in confusion and then suddenly his face clears, the sun comes out, and a smile spreads across his muddy face.

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and comments are so appreciated!


End file.
